The Air Before Rain

Chapter 11 – The Air Before Rain

The year learned a new pace. It didn’t sprint. It didn’t idle. It found the tempo of somebody who had finally worked out how to carry grocery bags in two balanced hands.

Work noticed without making a parade of it. A project with messy inputs and unromantic outputs landed clean, and Aleem’s manager slid a letter across the table in the small room where HR kept plants alive. “Senior,” she said, smiling with the restraint of a person who had learned that good news didn’t need cymbals. “Same spreadsheets, slightly more power to prevent stupidity.”

He laughed, grateful. He texted his mother: I can buy slightly nicer rice now. She replied with ten thumbs up and a photo of the stove as if the stove were his new colleague.

Weekends made promises and kept them. He ran the park connector from Kallang to Marina in the hour before the sun remembered its personality. He repaired a cupboard hinge with a calm that would have startled last year’s version of him. He learned to make omelettes that stayed intact because he finally respected heat as timing, not bravado.

The crane on the shelf gathered dust obediently. He blew it clean. The museum ticket stood beside it like a sentence fragment allowed to live.

The fandom, too, settled into competence. White Crane Drive ticked upward like rain measured honestly. Stories came in small, sturdy sentences. I called once and a stranger answered. My friend sent the number; I didn’t call but I slept knowing it existed. Ms. Lin sent quarterly graphs that looked like proof without drama.

The crew banners had become a thing without becoming a brand. A tradition of A4s. Volunteers trained new volunteers the way older cousins teach the younger ones how to fold a ketupat–hands over hands, patient, no narrating what doesn’t need narration. Ushers learned faces the way coffee shops learn usual orders. Dan the stagehand acquired myth status and continued to shrug it off like gaffer dust.

The quiet bridge toolkit lived its best life abroad. Jakarta rewrote a line to fit its vowels; Berlin added a note about winter coats and how to clap softly in them; Mexico City recorded a hummed harmony that made rooms better behaved by design. Emails arrived from floor managers in accents made of punctuation: soft = beautiful. decibel minus four; crew happy. please continue; no signs larger than A4.

Aleem kept the inbox neat, the channel pinned, the spreadsheets unglamorous, and the words small. It was enough.

Whispers travel differently in a city that has learned to listen. One morning the algorithm grew speculative; a friend-of-a-staff in a forum said “next cycle”; a promoter hinted at venue holds with a smile you could hear; a fan account drew a calendar with more colors than sense.

Zara looked up from her laptop at the kopitiam where ceiling fans negotiated with heat. “Fifth tour,” she said, this time without the exclamation mark. “Or something shaped like one.”

Kai stirred his kopi kosong with martial focus. “My shoulders are ready to carry bins,” he said. “But my heart… maybe also.”

Aleem did not write the words final or last anywhere. He put fifth on a Post‑it and stuck it to the edge of his screen the way people put saint cards on dashboards.

They drafted an email that assumed nothing and prepared for everything. Subject: SG Courtesy Plan – Next Cycle (If Approved). It contained the bones: stacks at 112 and 118; volunteer brief (no logos, chest height, recycle); quiet bridge (peer-to-peer only; no screens); “no airport/hotel” reminder in three languages; White Crane Drive dates, kept separate and small.

The venue replied with the kind of civility that means the calendar has secrets. Noted. If dates confirm, previous approvals in principle stand. The promoter’s assistant wrote, We’ll know soon. Your group makes our security lead less tired; thank you.

Aleem saved the drafts and went back to a spreadsheet about delivery windows. He guarded his calm like a cat guards a patch of sunlight.

Life added its own milestones with the quiet competence of a good logistics team. His cousin got engaged in a ceremony where aunties did the arithmetic of gold bangles with terrifying speed. He played guitar for the dinner and remembered to tune between songs like an adult. He took his mother to a foot reflexology place and endured pain with dignity while she laughed at him in public. He attended a colleague’s baby’s one‑month celebration and learned to carry an infant like important stationery.

On a Wednesday that smelled like approaching rain, he enrolled in a Japanese evening class at the community center. Not for romance, not for ambition. For courtesy. To say thank you and okay and we will wait without borrowing someone else’s grammar all the time. The teacher was a woman who respected vowels and latecomers equally. He sat in the second row and practiced bowing with his sentences.

Sometimes, after class, he walked along the canal and tried phrases out under his breath. Otsukaresama deshita felt too intimate for strangers. Sumimasen was a workhorse. Ki o tsukete–take care–lived in his mouth like a promise he would not spend without permission.

The announcement arrived on a Tuesday at 3:07 p.m., which is when news likes to make offices inefficient. A clean image on the official account: AURORA9 – 5th Tour “LAST LIGHT”. The subtitle wore its honesty like a neat dress: Our final global tour before new chapters. Dates bloomed. Singapore was near the end.

The internet did what it always does–cried performatively, argued semantics, posted compilations no one needed. Aleem stood from his chair, refilled his water, and sat down again. He sent two messages that were practical and a third that wasn’t.

To the venue: We saw the announcement. Same plan as before, with your approval. Two collection bins; no on‑screen graphics; ushers briefed by us 60 minutes prior; lyric cards peer‑to‑peer only.

To the liaison: Congratulations on getting to say it cleanly. We’ll keep rooms kind. If there are any special requests for the final SG date, we will follow.

To Zara and Kai: We do it exactly right.

He pinned a message in the channel titled LAST LIGHT – SG Ground Rules. It was boring on purpose: no hotels, no airports, no management office doorstep “gifts,” no themed signs that trapped women into responding about their futures, no “marry me” jokes, no chanting during ments unless invited, quiet bridge as usual, thank three crew by job title in your heart. At the bottom he added: Tradition = kindness repeated.

The replies arrived with relief. People like being told how to behave as long as the rules are kind. A teenager wrote, Thank you for not making me feel stupid. An auntie asked if her section could practice the bridge harmony once beforehand. He said no, gently.

Tickets day was a storm with a queue number. Zara coordinated from three screens like an air‑traffic controller with a sense of humor. Kai fed the team curry puffs because carbohydrates calm. Aleem aimed for the middle bowl again. Row twelve was taken, which felt like a blessing; he would let the tradition belong to everyone. He took row ten, aisle seat, the kind of vantage point you buy when you trust the building.

After the dust settled, he sent one neat email to Ms. Lin: White Crane Drive will run during LAST LIGHT SG. Goal equal to last year, correlation disclaimers as usual. Quiet updates only. She replied with a sticker of a white crane that somehow didn’t look silly and a line that read, Our lines will be ready. Thank you for small, repeated kindnesses.

The weeks leading into the tour tasted like the air before rain. The city went about its business with a new tenderness toward itself. In the supermarket, strangers yielded aisles as if someone had printed a sign. At the void deck, a teenager practiced a dance with a friend and accepted the auntie’s “not so loud” with grace. On the MRT, a boy offered his seat to a woman who might have taken offense; she didn’t. People were trying.

He wrote a one‑page Volunteer Handbook – LAST LIGHT (SG) and printed it at Bras Basah where the auntie now knew his name and the exact firmness of card stock he would ask for. The handbook contained three sections and a sentence at the end.

– Before: arrive early; meet ushers by name; keep the stacks neat; smile in five languages even if your mouth knows only two; no photos with staff unless staff offer first.
– During: final bow only; chest height; no waving; if someone lifts early, model down; if someone shouts, don’t; thank the crew with your face; hush the bridge gently; don’t film yourself “hushing.”
– After: stack and return; help clean; thank ushers again; don’t post debrief details that belong to venue ops.
– Sentence: We are here to make the room easier to love.

Zara read it and stamped it with a sticky note that said approved. Kai added, “Free mints for volunteers with dry throats.” He hauled a ziplock of mints like a priest with sweets.

The tour began elsewhere as all tours must. Clips arrived: Seoul’s precision, Bangkok’s warmth, Jakarta’s thunderclouds rehearsing above a roof that kept its promise. The quiet bridge worked in languages that didn’t need help–sound obeys physics even when cultures differ. The crew banners kept their A4 dignity. The ments carried more nostalgia than usual and less performance. The word final did not need to be said in caps; it was present like bass.

A modest line arrived from the liaison’s inbox after the second weekend: Thank you for reminding your community to avoid “farewell” signs that pin us down. We will say our own goodbyes in our own ways. He replied with a bow made of text and the sentence he’d taught his class‑room mouth: Otsukaresama deshita. Good work. We see your effort.

Two weeks before Singapore, he cooked dinner for his mother and watched her calculate whether she trusted his onions. She did. After, she wiped her hands and looked at the papers inside his locker door, the small museum of rules that had kept his life arranged.

“Soon it will be over,” she said, not unkind. “The show part.”

He stared at the squares–Respect. Distance. Gratitude. Approval, always. Don’t be the wind. Rest is allowed. Tradition = kindness repeated. The edges had begun to curl like elderly relatives’ ears.

“The show part,” he agreed. “But not… the way rooms can be.”

She nodded as if he had passed a test she’d set by accident. “Then you keep doing the small things,” she said. “Even if no girls dance.”

“I will.”

In bed, he turned toward the wall and thought of the corridor in Kobe where light had turned concrete into a friend. He breathed his practiced counts and didn’t try to make auguries. The romance he imagined for his life–if romance was the right word for the way he wanted to be–did not require fireworks. It needed a table set well, a room calibrated to kindness, a person across it who enjoyed quiet as a verb.

Load‑in week smelled like lemon cleaner and electricity stored in cables. The duty manager’s email arrived with bullet points he could have typed himself: Stacks at 112/118. No on‑screen cards. Ushers introduced to leads. Final bow cue at stage manager’s discretion. No encore chants. Soft bridge. A final line: If the weather is bad, indoor waiting only. We will enforce.

He replied with coordinates and calm. Volunteers got their call times. A cousin’s boyfriend with a van offered to move bins for free. Dan texted a three‑word benediction via a number Aleem had not known he had: Bring extra gaffer. He didn’t ask how Dan had got his contact. Rooms find their own wiring when behavior is good.

On the eve, he walked the Esplanade bridge and let the city talk to him in light. He imagined the bowl, the stacks, the breath; he did not imagine faces. He trusted craft. He trusted rehearsals and bodies that knew what not to do. He trusted ushers with names and volunteers with mints. He trusted the signs to be read and obeyed.

He took out his phone and typed one line in Notes without trying to improve it. Tomorrow: we hold the room steady while the people who need to say goodbye say it in their own key. He put the phone away and watched a bicycle glide under the lamppost as if performing competence.

The morning of the show, rain pretended to start and decided not to. He ate toast. He checked that the cue cards were in the tote, that the gaffer roll sat in the pocket, that his pen worked without dramatics. Zara texted, I’m already at Gate 3 annoying nobody. Kai sent a photo of two bins and wrote, These are my sons.

At the stadium, the air‑con kept its promises and the carpet knew its job. Ushers greeted them with voices that had learned their names. The stacks were arranged as if by a ritual older than anyone present. The volunteer handbook sat on a clipboard and behaved like a prayer.

The house filled. The VCR glowed. The first three songs were efficient explanations of why people pay to be in rooms together. The ment chose its sentences with care. Aleem sat in his row ten, aisle seat, and did the thing he now recognized as his part: he behaved.

And in the space between the second and third songs–somewhere a camera operator checked a cable, somewhere a runner dashed because a battery had not been obedient, somewhere a floor tape needed encouraging–a small alignment of attention happened onstage. Aoi’s gaze did its weather check. For a brief beat, her line of sight slid the way a dancer’s does when they read a room before jumping into it. It brushed row ten with the neutrality of craft.

He didn’t raise his hand. He didn’t nod. He stayed in the posture of a person who had learned to accept being part of many.

The bridge arrived later and did its small miracle. The cards rose at the end and made their clean grammar again. Tears happened in pockets and did not flood aisles. The city behaved itself.

When he helped stack at 118 after, when Wati handed him a bundle with the affectionate exasperation of a colleague, when Dan walked past and muttered, “See you after,” in the accent of people who don’t promise what they cannot deliver, Aleem understood something quiet: the connection he wanted with the world had always been built brick by brick, count by count. If some day a person occupied that space with him, it would be because they both knew how to keep rooms kind.

At home that night, he added a new square to the locker door with neat pen: Hold the room steady. He tucked it behind the others, then took it out and placed it on top. Some instructions deserve promotion.

His phone buzzed just once with a new email that contained only logistics–collection tomorrow 1500; duty manager will meet you at service door D–and a line squeezed between polite nouns like a thank‑you hidden in a receipt.

– “Thank you for tradition.” – A.

He did not ascribe it to fate. He ascribed it to practice. The romance, if romance was on the calendar, would arrive because the room had been made ready for it.

He turned toward the wall and breathed like a man who knew where quiet belonged.

Respect. Distance. Gratitude.

The air before rain held.